Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse -- Stage 10 Video
Well, all roads lead to Wallachia...or rather they all lead straight to where Dracula happens to lie in wait, eager to tear down those who would seek to slay him and end his plans to create a "bad world filled with evil"...how on earth can the good people of Europe hope to prevail?
This stage, simply put...is extremely short. Like, shorter than the original Castlevania's final stage, not that Stage 6 of that game really posed much of an obstacle, considering how you only had to clear the stage once before reaching the ominous staircase leading to Dracula's throne room...then you could continue from that point even if you got a Game Over.
Simon got off easy in that respect, but no such luck for Trevor (and friends...if he's got any), because like any other stage, losing all your lives on this one will send you straight back to the first block. Oh, and I'd just like to point out that Stage 10 is really "Stage A"...because A is just 10 in the base-16 hexadecimal number system...but somehow referring to this as "Stage A" in the video title seemed to make less sense overall.
For that matter, crossing Dracula's threshold doesn't even grant you temporary immunity to being sent back earlier in the stage, even though you do quite clearly pass through a doorway to reach it...something of a subversion of the normal "door equals checkpoint" rule of thumb. I guess Trevor's finally being forced to pay for those two block divisions that took place on staircases behind the floor of the new screen.
Anyway, I don't feel the slightest bit of shame to admit it...I had to play this stage a lot. And not just because I'm playing it with each character, but because for such a short stage, there's a lot of treachery hidden within its otherwise innocuous confines.
Let's see if we can't add things up just a bit:
The first room is teeming with black crows? Check.
A scrolling room with plenty of clockwork and crumbling platforms? Check.
Strategically placed Bone Pillars for maximum frustration? Check.
Blood Skeletons with whips? Check.
A room with its entire length to be traversed by a series of pendulums? Check.
A climactic showdown with the big man himself? Triple-check.
Oh, and did I mention the bats? Plenty of bats to go around...and a spider! Thank goodness for no gargoyles, anyway.
Strangely, there's actually a rather easy-to-get (provided you remembered to bring an axe from the first room, I guess) extra life before the checkpoint, and what with score bonuses granted for beating the individual forms of Dracula, it's not at all unlikely to end up with four lives past the halfway.
Oh, and just for the record, I'm trying something a bit different this time, so bear in mind that consecutive clips aren't from the same playthrough, so all the characters are sprinkled here and there throughout the proceedings. I'll move on to more character-specific versions of events in the other videos. The idea this time, anyway, is to try to keep the general flow of the level intact while demonstrating the various pitfalls along the way.
Enjoy the monstrous montage of massive mega-failure. Try not to think too hard about how long I was actually playing this stage across the four "routes" to be able to bring you all this concentrated heroic doom.
I do consider it a fair compilation of the stage's impressive treachery for being so short...and the resulting agony that players will feel each time they're forced to start it again from the beginning.
Save & Share: 
Overhazard: That's an odd oversight, calling this place Stage A. Perhaps A can stand for something. "Atrocious"? Dracula sure turns into some pretty random stuff.
YuuGiJoou: Dracula always turns into random stuff...except in Castlevania II. I figure they didn't want to mess up the display with a two-character stage number, putting "BLK10-01" without spaces seems kinda sketchy. I don't really see it as an oversight, it's just a difference in numbering convention. Super Mario Bros. 2 (The Lost Levels) starts numbering its worlds A through D after nine...or rather eight, since you have to pass through worlds one through nine without a warp zone to get to nine.
Overhazard: What are some of the stranger things you've seen Dracula turn into? (He definitely has a lot of imagination, if anything.)
YuuGiJoou: I figure they handwaive this by attributing the source of his dark powers as "chaos," also explaining why his castle changes shape every time somebody enters it...something specifically noted by characters who make a repeat visit. The weirdest one might be subjective, but Harmony of Dissonance involves a deformed mass of organs and Circle of the Moon uses a bat-thing with foot-mouths and an eye-crotch. Order of Ecclesia uses a humanoid Dracula...who actually WALKS...and scissor-kicks! Crazy!
Overhazard: But this castle gets destroyed...He must have certainly built a new one. He must build castles in much the same way Bowser does, except he keeps it in mostly the same location whereas Bowser will put them anywhere sufficiently lava-filled. But I guess as I've only seen the castle get destroyed, I'll assume this is an atypical ending.
YuuGiJoou: "Castlevania" is the name of the castle itself, analogous to the Japanese title for the series, "Akuma-jo Dracula" (roughly translated as "Demon Castle Dracula"...or rather the demon castle of Dracula, bearing the same name as its owner), so it is indeed the same castle, a "creature of chaos" that is constantly changing whenever its Lord's powers again rise. The castle itself also has a habit of not staying put, if you can believe that. Creatures of chaos need to roam, too.
Overhazard: So...did Dracula name the castle after himself, or is it an extension of himself? And the castle rebuilds itself all the time? Why would the Belmont family just continue to let it reassemble? Couldn't they, say, take a few bricks with them so the castle could never complete itself?
Author: YuuGiJoou; Uploaded: Nov 10, 2009; Duration: 7:23; Views: 30
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